Reflections on a week unlike any other

Jonathan Comet column

I've been trying to write this column all week. But now it's 3:30 on a Saturday afternoon, my deadline is fast approaching, and all I have is a scattered document of incompletes; ideas, sentences, paragraphs, going nowhere.

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Posted Apr. 21, 2013 at 12:01 AM
Updated Apr 21, 2013 at 7:06 AM

Posted Apr. 21, 2013 at 12:01 AM
Updated Apr 21, 2013 at 7:06 AM

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I've been trying to write this column all week.

But now it's 3:30 on a Saturday afternoon, my deadline is fast approaching, and all I have is a scattered document of incompletes; ideas, sentences, paragraphs, going nowhere.

Taken in whole, the text looks like a bad poem, free verse that doesn't make any sense or add up to more than the sum of its parts.

Maybe that's fitting, considering the week that passed.

On Monday morning, I had a column all ready to burst, an ode to the long-anticipated and much-enjoyed family vacation to Florida: Benjamin's birthday trip to Disney World.

I was going to write about his first experience as an air traveler, the feel of his hand in mine as we lifted off for the first time, the sight of him running excitedly though the arrival gate, Super Mario suitcase trailing behind him. I was going to write about spending time with his grandparents in Florida, the simple joys of just hanging out in the pool mastering the art of submerging your head without getting water up your nose. "Daddy, look!"

I was going to write about the world of Disney, how the smiles and shared desires brought everyone together, made the long lines and heat tolerable, how my son would never forget certain things he experienced as long as he lived, how it really was the happiest place on earth.

I was going to write about how the experienced seemed to forge something new in us as a family, strengthening our bond. I was going to that he left for Florida as our little baby, but somehow came home changed into a full-fledged, card-carrying boy. It was going to be sweet, and subtle, and something for Benjamin to read when he's got a boy of his own.

Then, just before I was due to head back to the office for a night shift after my week off, the alert: "TWO BLASTS AT FINISH OF BOSTON MARATHON." The first report quickly developed into the biggest New England story in decades, and pushed the memories of Florida into the back burner of my brain.

That night, when I got home after a blurry evening getting the news out, I went into my son's room and looked at the picture from Disney we chose to frame: me, my wife, my son and a six-foot-tall blue alien named Stitch, arms around each other, looking exactly as happy as we were.

It already felt like an event of the distant past.

On Tuesday, I was going to write about my mother.

My awesome, amazing mother, who watched 9/11 unfold from her office window in Manhattan, saw the soot-covered foot traffic march past her window in shared shock, drove home through the Holland Tunnel with a car full of people and white knuckles.

My mother, whose reaction to the events wasn't to move out of NYC but to consider buying Yankees season tickets.

My mother, now working in Boston, still commuting an hour both ways into the big city to do intense work, my mother who got on the Pike west about 10 minutes before the first blast. "I for one, dislike having my cities bombed," she wrote me that morning. "Neeee neeeee," I wrote back, our private way of saying "I love you."

On Wednesday, I was going to write about the amazing generosity of human beings.

I was going to write that this spirit is wonderful here in Massachusetts but hardly exclusive to us. I was going to write that it is found everywhere, on every nook and cranny of the globe, where we are all born good and most of us stay that way.

I was going to write about how the fragility of life gives it its beauty, and wax eloquent about human existence.

I wasn't sure where that one was going, to be honest. Things just seemed to be going too fast, out there in the real world.

On Thursday, I was going to write about social media, and friendship, and the bonds that bind people together.

I was going to write about the way Facebook and Twitter have thrown communications for a loop that we're all still adjusting to. I was going to write about the amazing view on the world you can get from a little video screen, viewable anywhere at anytime.

I was going to write about how everything is a double-edged sword, how every bad thing is countered by hundreds of good things if you're willing to look for them. I was going to write about the amazing power each individual person has in a world that's never had more of us, and how that's both terrifying and wonderful.

On Friday, when I woke, it was all coming together. I was going to write about Boston, and the definitions of what made "home."

I was going to take the day wandering the streets of a city I'd long taken for granted, taking in whatever I saw. I was going to compare it with the crowds I saw on Main Street U.S.A. in Disney, on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago. Then I was going to go to Fenway Park to take in the scene of a return to normalcy as the Red Sox returned to action for the first time since Marathon morning.

But normalcy wasn't on the agenda. Normalcy would have to wait. Instead, the headlines that greeted me from my phone 10 seconds after I woke up were the stuff of moviemaking, spy thrillers, the type of thing that fortunately doesn't come along every day.

At points in the day, the column was going to be about anything and everything. It was going to be about the bonds of family, about the corruption of the young, about nationality, about religion. It was going to be about my days as a 19-year-old student at UMass Dartmouth, about my questions about how to handle the whole thing as a parent. It was going to be about violence, about reality, about the tyranny of fear, sympathy, empathy, revenge.

It was sensory overload, collective shock.

Finally, Friday late afternoon, while meetings were going on in the newsroom and our reporters were working with frenzied dedication, I quietly grabbed my keys and left. I picked up my son, got a few things for dinner, and went home, to the sound of video games in one room and local Channel 5 news in the other.

When "Suspect 2" was caught, alive, to face a future that promises to be quite grim, I was at my friend Jay's house playing cards with my best friends, having a good time. After a week of hard work providing for others and helping the world at large go forward, we had all earned that moment in time.

So had "Suspect 2" earned his, handcuffed to a hospital bed, left to a future of regret and loneliness.

And now, on Saturday, I'm left with all of it.

Family. Home. Friends. Life. Death.

Tragedy. Triumph. Boston. America. The world. The universe.

They' re the same themes that we all explored all week, the same themes most of us juggle (with less intensity) every week. It's not a simple thing, this human existence, going through our days floating through space on a giant, miraculous sphere of elemental cohesion.

And I can't offer much more than a simple take on any of it.

For 15 years, this column, in this spot, has always been about my life, my views, the world at large filtered through my eyes.

But for now, my eyes are a bit weary.

They 're underlined by dark circles, and they're stinging a bit from overuse.

So if it's OK with everyone, I'm going to rest, just for a few minutes, long enough to to block the world out for a spell and mull it all over in the darkness.

Before I'm woken again by the light.

Jonathan Comey is sports and features editor for The Standard-Times. Email him at jcomey@s-t.com